Does your conscience bother you?

Erik’s latest post regarding MOOCs and the very interesting discussion thread it generated raises a critical question: to what extent will technological innovations in the structure of higher education generate efficiencies that will be passed on to students, and to what extent will those innovations simply enrich the owners of those technologies and their favored hirelings? In a tolerably efficient market one wouldn’t have to worry too much about this — that Bill Gates and Larry Ellison have become gazillionaires has not interfered with a process by which the laptop that I’m typing on costs less in real terms than many electronic typewriters cost 30 years ago, even though the laptop is a vastly superior device.

But of course the market for educational credentials in America is, from a consumer perspective, wildly inefficient and increasingly dysfunctional (Note that the market for educational credentials is not the same thing as the process of education itself, which in many ways is simply not reducible to classical economic analysis).

What follows is a vignette about how rotten one corner of the business of higher education in America has gotten.

Sterling Partners is a private equity firm that, in recent years, has come to the conclusion that “the world has never been hungrier for educational services that deliver on their promise.” (Trans.: there’s gold in them there no questions asked non-dischargeable federal educational loan fund hills). As part of its strategy to maximize various edutastic synergies, etc., Sterling Partners acquired Infilaw Systems, a company whose assets consist of three for-profit law schools: Charlotte, Florida Coastal, and Phoenix (the latter isn’t affiliated with the University of Phoenix).

These three schools represent the ninth circle of what Irresponsible Bloggers Who Lack Civility have irresponsibly and uncivilly labeled the law school scam. All feature atrocious employment statistics, sky high tuition, enormous class sizes, and graduates with massive debt loads. For example, Phoenix’s 2012 graduating class had an average law school debt of nearly $200,000 at repayment, a 2012 entering class of 447, and an estimated cost of attendance of nearly $66,000 per year. Florida Coastal enrolled 580 first years — more than any law school in the country, with the exception of the egregious Thomas J. Cooley. Charlotte offered less “scholarship” money to its students, per capita, than any other law school — in a world where sticker price tuition at law schools is increasingly similar to advertised prices at garage sales, nearly 96% of Charlotte’s 2012 class paid full boat, as they say in the used car industry.

It’s hard to describe how awful the employment outcomes are at these schools. Note that all of them charge just under $40,000 per year in tuition — a price level which makes sense, to the extent it ever does, only at the handful of law schools where a solid majority of the class are getting well-paying jobs. None of these schools publish any salary data for their graduates — the feckless ABA still doesn’t require schools do to so — but what employment stats are available are so terrible that this information gap ought to be beside the point.

Barely one percent of the graduates at these three schools combined managed to get jobs with even a medium-sized law firm, let alone one of the large national firms that pay the kind of salaries that might possibly justify the tuition charged by these federally-funded rackets. Around a quarter of graduates were either completely unemployed nine months after graduation, or were stuffed into law-school created “jobs” that were both temporary and part-time. (You can be sure most of these “jobs” came into being shortly before the nine-month NALP reporting deadline and ceased to exist shortly afterwards).

Phoenix and Charlotte, which came into existence in 2005 and 2006 respectively, have been expanding at an almost exponential rate (Phoenix had 69 graduates in 2010, but had nearly 1100 students enrolled this past year), despite horrendous job prospects for new law graduates. Florida Coastal is, as noted above, already enormous — it has existed since 1996 — even though Florida features far worse employment prospects for new law graduates than the already-terrible national average.

These three schools, in other words, represent a straight-up educational ripoff in the most unambiguous possible way, with their for-profit status merely providing an exclamation point to what the rest of the relevant data make perfectly clear, as Richard Nixon used to say. That they like to characterize their operations as providing “access” to “under-served” minority groups and the like (aka: vulnerable individuals who often lack the requisite cultural capital to recognize a smooth-talking multi-degreed grifter in a three-piece suit) just adds to the overall stench emitted by this con.

So it ought to tell us something when the University of Alabama announced last week that Kenneth Randall, who had been dean of the university’s law school for 20 years, was “retiring” effective immediately, to enter what the university’s president characterized demurely as “the private sector.”

“The private sector” turns out to be . . . well let’s allow ex-Dean Randall to speak for himself:

We all are still working on the margins of traditional education with distance ed; it is high time to create economies of scale industry-wide; to bring law to non-lawyers; to create hybrid models of brick-and-mortar and technology-based programs; to train lawyers to deliver legal services in the new technology-based ways clients demand; and to train law students for jobs that don’t require a bar license. We need inclusive education, that breaks down geographical and other boundaries.

The InfiLaw System offered a special opportunity, supporting me to lead a new venture, InfiLaw Ventures, both to create new content, and to deliver existing content in ways that expand markets and serve student learners who otherwise might be left out of education….We will joint venture with schools nationally and internationally. I’ve been involved in traditional legal education. But the ABA rules on distance education need updating. We need the accreditors and educators and innovators coming together to meet the new realities of legal education.

Now personally I don’t think that, given the current economics of legal education and the legal profession, this is a whole lot different from announcing that you’re becoming a K Street lobbyist for a third world dictator, or maybe the proprietor of a Nevada brothel — with the notable difference that people who run brothels tend to avoid characterizing their ventures in such public-regarding terms.

Yet this announcement produced what in the halls of legal academia? Cries of amazement and disgust? A painful and embarrassed silence? Far from it! Behold:

I guess I’m not shocked that Ken’s leaving for other mountains to climb. And I hope I have the chance to spend time with him down the road, to learn more lessons about teaching and administration, and life in general from him. The quotation from Emerson that comes to mind now is from “Self-Reliance”: “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” And without sounding too melodramatic, that is certainly the case of the University of Alabama School of Law and Ken Randall.

I am sorry Ken’s leaving UASL, but I wish him well in his new endeavors – after 20 years as dean and 30 years on the faculty, it is no surprise he’s decided he wants to do something new. Ken has been the most effective dean in America for at least the last decade – the bad news is he’s leaving; the good news is that he’s not off to be dean at one of our rivals. [Andrew Moriss]

Ken Randall has been an exceptional Dean, one of the best in the country. He has been so because he works harder than anyone else, has exceptional vision, and cares tremendously about the University of Alabama law school, students, faculty and alums. His plans to retire have been in the works for months and delayed several times as he put the law school ahead of his personal desires. Dean Randall is a person of exceptional integrity.To suggest otherwise is irresponsible. UA law school has been fortunate to have had Dean Randall as its leader. Come visit our law school and see the outstanding job he has done.

[Pamela Bucy Pierson]

The last two items are in response to a (lightly sourced) report that Randall’s departure may not have been voluntary.

I would have thought that defending the “Infilaw System” and its lamentable progeny would have been beyond the pale for putatively respectable legal academics, but in fact I haven’t been able to find a word of criticism from inside legal academia regarding this move in the nine days since it was announced.

That, I suggest, has some relevance to the question with which this post started.

Update: A glimpse into Infilaw’s idea of “access to the legal profession.” (h/t Bloix)

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Too bad P. T. Barnum wasn’t a lawyer, so they could name law degree’s after him.

The, “There’s A Lawyer Born Every Second,” degree.

Too bad.
At one time, being a lawyer was at least an semi-honorable profession, that didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Now?
Well… Fill-in your own blanks.

somethingblue

It is difficult to get a man to understand something etc.

Davis X. Machina

If it’s not reducible to classical economic analysis, it doesn’t exist.

Let me do it on one leg:

All that is, can be bought and sold.
All that cannot be bought and sold, is not.
All that can be bought and sold, must be bought and sold.

That is the whole of the Law and the Prophets. The rest is commentary.

efgoldman

Does your conscience bother you?

Capitalism has no conscience.
Money has no morals.

Manju

You say that like its a bad thing.

efgoldman

No, but fraud is.

Manju

Good answer$

The Dark Avenger

We aren’t prejudiced against the capitalist religion, Manju, we’re just heretics who believe that people should come before profits.

efgoldman

I work for a large, very profitable, but family-owned financial services company. Because the owners want it that way, they treat both employees and customers, at every level, honestly and with respect. It doesn’t mean we don’t compete like crazy, but you never saw our name in the papers during any of the recent bubbles or the collapse.
I’d put it differently: profit comes first, but not at the expense of people.

The Dark Avenger

Unfortunately, I’ve seen the results when the founder/owner of a company dies and his successors decide that profits are more important than people.

Wait, you’re not supposed to pay the labeled prices at garage sales? Shit.

The_Melvinator

Depending on the item or items in question, haggling is usually an accepted practice at garage sales.
On small items, in the <5$ range – kitschy stuff, childrens' toys, old paperbacks, or similar, such haggling usually takes the form of asking for a 'bulk discount' as in, "How about if I give you $5 for these 7 CDs [marked at 1$ each]?"
Meanwhile, larger items – furniture or musical instruments, for example – can be approached with an initial offer of ~50%-to-~75% of marked price, especially if notice is taken of any significant imperfections in the item, as in, "Well, it's not bad for a basic Squier, but it's got a couple pretty deep scratches there, and the jack's not seated that tightly, and might need to be replaced. I'd probably go to thirty for it, or, tell you what, throw in the amp, we can call it fifty."

john

Best. Post. Ever.

Manju

Does your conscience bother you?

Is Dean Randall being compared to George Wallace? Tell the truth.

I heard mister Campos blog about him. I heard ole Paul put him down.

anonprof

Paul–Usually I disagree with you, but you’re right on this one. There is one other thing I wish you’d look into: wasn’t there a comment in one of the reports about his departure that Randall was consulting for Infilaw (or whatever it is) while still dean? That’s the kind of conflict of interest that would lose even a CEO his job.

Paul Campos

I agree that consulting for Infilaw while still dean of another law school seems improper, even without regard to the scammy nature of Infilaw, but OTOH Rudy Hasl, the current dean of Thomas Jefferson in San Diego, is listed as a member of the firm’s consulting board. (As is Arthur Miller, formerly of Harvard, now being paid some stupendous sum by the NYU machine. Apparently some people will do anything for money, no matter how much they already have).

MAJeff

Apparently some people will do anything for money, no matter how much they already have

That list includes almost everyone, no matter how much (or how little) they already have, with only one modification – ‘anything for significant(to them) money.’

A cynical district sales manager I once knew used to say, ‘We’re all whores, some us know our price, and some of us don’t.’ Of course the implication was that the ones that don’t know their price only because they haven’t had it offered yet.

Example: Alec Baldwin, erstwhile liberal Democrat does commercials for Capital One predator cards focused on all the ‘free miles’ from using the cards, that likely average around 15+% interest, on free money from the Fed.

TWBB

Probably not the best example because Baldwin donates everything he receives from those commercials to charity.

Lee Rudolph

So? If the description of what he’s advertising is correct, it would be evil to do it for free; immiserating N people in return for being put in position to redirect a (surely small) faction of the profit on their immiseration to M (many fewer than N) people is no less evil, nu?

george

Your two examples (Microsoft & Oracle) are wrong. Yes, hardware prices are low but you and society is paying much higher price than it should for the poorly designed software. The monopolies suck uup all the money such that qualified professionally developed software by competitors never get traction in the market because of networking effects. Just like it is too ineffective to have two or three competing electric power lines to each house. File format standards for documents and spreadsheets is very inefficient. Think of how much progress there would be if pre-computer hand written communication had 3-5 incompatible languages. A majority of U.S. citizens don’t even believe the government should post laws and instruction in even one other language (Spanish). I have been in the computer industry over 40 years. There has been significant damage (cost, & loss of innovation). Microsoft windows and Microsoft Office are wildly over priced.

Colin Day

Proprietary file format standards for documents and spreadsheets is very inefficient.

FTFY

george

Sorry, I meant multiple file formats are very inefficient. History shows most users will pay for proprietary software if most everyone they communicate has the same software even if alternative free software is available. Of course Microsoft helps. They turn blind eye to copying of their software if the alternative if a groups of users might abandon windows/office for the free alternative. They rather users copy Microsoft software instead of using competing software.

Colin Day

OK, but you seemed to be attacking Microsoft. What would the web be like if HTML were proprietary?

Why have third world dictators and proprietors of Nevada brothels done to you, that you besmirch their reputation in such a way?

Bloix

Infilaw is a truly evil company. E.g.;

“Phoenix School of Law fired two tenured professors who objected to its attempt to reduce students’ ability to transfer, which a dean called “building a better mousetrap,” the professors claim in court…

“Associate Dean Penny Willrich announced during a special meeting on attrition “that she had already adopted a policy of not writing recommendation letters for students seeking to transfer out of the school.”

“An InfiLaw representative at the meeting “responded that writing recommendation letters would be contrary to the interests of the school and questioned why a faculty member would write recommendation letters,” the complaint states…”

The discussion about Erik’s post was sadly derailed by attacks on the posters’ motivation for writing on the topic. That aside, it’s not reasonable to think of MOOCs as a replacement for a true education. They represent another tool to be used that could potentially lead to more people getting access to great professors that would otherwise not be available to them. Nothing can replace my Modern Brit Lit professor (Dr. Chris Brown taught me to read a lot more carefully, not just Joyce but Bob Seger), but most algorithms could replace my English 101 teacher. The correct balance is yet to be determined. Yes, distance learning has been challenging in the past, but the difference is that traditionally distance learning has been done by the same professor who teach regular classes, not specialists in online learning. Mostly because there aren’t really any specialists in online learning because it is relatively new. The gist of the thread from the original post was that professors are going to lose their jobs because greedy corporations are going to take over education, regardless of student outcomes and the idea that there would be any efficiencies gained via MOOCs would be turned into profits or football stadiums. I am more optimistic than that (not due to naivete but my relationship to educators/administrators). My last thought is that I put MRU, Khan Academy, Udacity, and Coursera in a different category than Phoenix University. Supporting the former can only be good for education, and I know that from experience.

DrS

Question for ya:

Why would you think that coming on to another comment thread, on a topic that is, at best, tangentially related to MOOCs, to reiterate the same things you said in the original would change the opinions of people who think you sound like a paid shill for MOOC profiteers?

Jason Hartley

Paul wrote: “to what extent will technological innovations in the structure of higher education generate efficiencies that will be passed on to students, and to what extent will those innovations simply enrich the owners of those technologies and their favored hirelings?” My response was to that question. My take is that some professors might lose their jobs, and that isn’t necessarily bad if students are being properly educated. And maybe the enrichment will spread to the students in some way. Considering Paul himself connected his post with the MOOC thread, I don’t understand your concern about my comment’s relevance. I’m not trying to convince anyone about my interest in the topic, I’m just taking part in a discussion. Using my real name.

Shwell Thanksh

And maybe the enrichment will spread to the students in some way.

I believe “trickle down” is the established modern parlance for such redistributive faerie castles.

Jason Hartley

If we were talking about tax policy, I would share your concern. But technological advances that produce efficiencies routinely lower costs for consumers (DVD players are practically free, for instance). The question is whether this will happen in the university system, where the relationship between competition and pricing is more complex than in the consumer electronics sector. I wouldn’t be using mealy mouth words like “maybe” or “some way” if I knew for sure what would happen, but it seems worthwhile to find out. I could say that if there are savings on the university side but no cost decrease, then that money would end up in someone’s pocket, that money would be subject to taxes, and the states could use that extra revenue to support colleges, but I don’t believe in faeries.

The Wrath of Oliver Kahn

I wouldn’t be using mealy mouth words like “maybe” or “some way” if I knew for sure what would happen, but it seems worthwhile to find out.

Perhaps it is worthwhile to find out … just not at the expense of destroying the system we already do have in the process.

I realize that what we’ve got now has significant problems, but I’ve yet to see a compelling argument that MOOCs will fix them (and yes, I’ve taken a few myself, for professional development purposes).

Jason Hartley

I agree don’t destroy the system; test this in a way that mitigates risk as much as possible. No one thing is going to fix the issues we have, but MOOCs could be part of the solution. I’m open to all ideas.

This angle of “paid shill” is cliched, obviously inflammatory, and reflects badly on those that implement it. It is rhetorically juvenile.

Jason Hartley

And wrong, besides, but I’ve given up on proving that.

Several drops of mercury

Well it changed my mind … from giving the benefit of the doubt, to not.

The Wrath of Oliver Kahn

Supporting the former can only be good for education, and I know that from experience.

Waitwaitwait – can only be good for education? You’re saying there can be no downside at all to education generally from supporting Coursera, Udacity, et al?

Yeah, I can’t imagine why anyone ever thought you were a shill for the MOOC industry. Huge fucking mystery, that.

Jason Hartley

It can only be good because it is free right now as opposed to the Phoenixes of the world, which means it gives broad access to quality lectures. If we find out that the courses are somehow harmful to our education system, then we will move to some other new idea. What is the downside of free, high-quality courses available to anyone with access to a computer? I would love to hear the answer to that fucking mystery.

Uncle Kvetch

We must do something.

This is something.

Therefore, we must do this.

Jason Hartley

No, this is something that is potentially a good thing, and many people believe that. Action for its own sake would be a mistake, of course.

The Wrath of Oliver Kahn

What is the downside of free, high-quality courses available to anyone with access to a computer?

In other words, what’s the downside of perpetual ponies?

First, you assume these courses are high-quality. I’ve taken some myself, and I can say that often, they just aren’t.

Second, you assume that these courses will remain free. This is a huge part of Erik’s argument – they most certainly will not remain free.

Jason Hartley

Often university course aren’t high quality as well, and they are ridiculously expensive. No one is saying all MOOCs are great, but there are high quality courses available, especially in computer science and math. And I don’t think classes are going to remain free, especially if they are folded into the regular curriculum, but they are free now. I’m not so naive that I don’t think somebody is going to make money at the expense of someone else off the deal, but I don’t want to reject something just because someday it might be as corrupt as the current system. It reminds me of the argument for austerity measures to deal with long-term debt issues in the face of high unemployment in the short term.

Western Dave

You know where else you can get access to free-high quality lectures? The frackin’ library! In a frackin’ book! Yet here in Philadelphia, as across the nation, libraries are being decimated despite all the other social benefits they provide. If you are culturally illiterate, how are you supposed to find the good MOOCs to take? MOOCs may be great for someplace with an underdeveloped educational system, but in the US short of a few reservations, we have freakin’ community colleges, tons of state unis of various sizes and prices points, private unis, SLACs, religious schools all of which are fighting for students. The problem isn’t lack of access or college being too expensive. The problem is a disconnect between perception and reality, needs and wants, and what the hell the point of a college education is to begin with. MOOCs are fine for job training and for narrowly exploring topics that have right answers. They are virtually useless for anything else. If yo think the point of college is to get right answers, you are doing it wrong. However, that is precisely what the powers that be want you to think college is for.

Lectures suck as teaching mechanisms, and the idea that you find good teachers by going to big name RESEARCH unis as opposed to small teaching institutions is laughable. If Udacity etc. where really interested in supplying high quality on-line experiences, they’d be partnering with the the folks at Stillwater Historians rather than the Ivys.

Jason Hartley

All good points. How do we close the gap between perception and reality? What is the point of of a college education? If we don’t use lectures, what can we use? I don’t agree with your last point that Udacity and their like aren’t really interested in supplying high quality online experiences. They might have an Ivy bias, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in outcomes.

Western Dave

You have high quality experiences by doing stuff. In Science that means labs, doing Science. In History, it means doing research and synthesizing primary and secondary sources, in English it means doing close reading of a text. And all of that done guided by experts and criticism from peers at doing this stuff. The most successful courses online have been in CS, where it’s fairly easy to tell if you are doing it right. Either the code works or it doesn’t (no comment on whether the code has tons of kludge or is elegant).

Several drops of mercury

maybe the proprietor of a Nevada brothel

That seems an unfair comparison – as I understand it, Nevada brothels provide fair service for the prices they charge.

in fact I haven’t been able to find a word of criticism from inside legal academia regarding this move in the nine days since it was announced.

Unsurprising, none of them want to foul up a possible future employment opportunity after all.

Lee Rudolph

Yeah, after all it does seem unlikely that they’ll be getting offers from any but the most niche-market Nevada brothels.

Rizzo

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — From the crimson flags in store windows to the hotels that swell on football weekends, this city lives and breathes the University of Alabama. So when a tornado tore through Tuscaloosa this week — killing at least 36 and leaving hundreds homeless a few miles from campus — shock replaced the excitement that was building for graduation.

On Thursday, the university called off the rest of this school year — canceling final exams and the last week of classes, and postponing graduation until August

“with the notable difference that people who run brothels tend to avoid characterizing their ventures in such public-regarding terms.”

I believe brothel owners have a better standing to characterize their ventures in public regarding terms.

kindasorta

Without commentary on the motives of those who push MOOCs as a low-cost alternative to traditional university courses, I would note that tens of thousands of law graduates already enroll in them in every year to prepare for the bar exam.

Over at Prawfs, Dan Rodriguez got huffy and dismissive when I mentioned that I got much more feedback on the style and content of my practice essays from Kaplan than I got from the LW&R instructor who never gave us more than 30 minutes of in-person feedback for our memos and briefs under the theory that she wanted no one to have more of her time than his peers for a graded event. While I conceded that a bar essay is a much shorter and less complex thing than a brief, I also noted that (a) my feedback was limited only by the number of essays I could write and submit, and (b) the Kaplan course cost about $2,000 for a nine-week period versus a semester of law school that cost about $8,500.

My then-girlfriend/now-wife had a LW&R instructor who gave a shit assigned much more work to help his students grasp what he wanted from them. Maybe if my law school had subcontracted some of the written assignment formulation and grading to an agency like the people who handle practice essays for Kaplan Bar Prep, I wouldn’t have felt so lost for the first month of my summer clerkship. I’m not suggesting that we replace all of law school with MOOCs, but breaking down the experience into its elements to find areas for improvement should not be anathema to any law school that wants to remain relevant in the years to come.

MacK

From talking to various people my broad impression is that MOOCs are very very effective in STEM, where many professors and lecturers are dreadful teachers. I remember the head of the Maths department in my old university teaching a Nat. Sci. 1 section – a man of incredible dullness (though in private he was a proselytising nudist), he spoke in a low monotonous monotone and placed vague squiggles on a blackboard – so devoid of any inflection that every character from s-f y, 5 etc all looked like “/”

What I hear is that many-many scientist and engineers, including undergraduates are adding Udacity, and Coursera to their studies so as to actually learn what should have been taught in a lecture, while a lot of senior researchers in universities and corporations also rave about Coursera in particular as a great way to catch up on new topics.

Meanwhile a lot of colleges think that they too can do MOOCs, despite the reality that Professor Mumbles would be hopeless in such a role. As one academic I know put it “a lot of people have no idea how much they will have to raise their game to give Coursera quality classes.” Many, as he put it, have zero presentation skills, never gave a shit about teaching anyway, don’t really give classes or lectures and are probably beyond redemption – and for a good few the public comparison that putting a set of classes online would result in would be catastrophic.

INFLAW sounds like a bunch of crooks though.

BoredJD

Although I have no doubt MOOCs will be turned into a weapon of Evil by the same folks who brought you the diploma mill model of law school, as others have said the concept is not something law students are unfamiliar with. Tens of thousands take Barbri, Themis or Pieper each year, or use CALI lessons to supplement there first-year courses.

The value of MOOCs will of course be limited by the fact that they have little value in the credentialing rat race that drives up education prices (and of course the people who took them would not be bar eligible). No legal employer would seriously consider somebody who graduated from CourseraLaw because there’s no controls on who can take the class like at brick and mortar schools. Note that this won’t stop people from paying for the courses on the belief that education = munny, but that would have happened anyway.

What law professors (and all professors) could do is be proactive- and agree to provide content for these organizations on the basis that the service provided remains free. That would ensure that those who wanted to learn for learning’s sake would have the opportunity to do so.

Snarki, child of Loki

….be proactive- and agree to provide content for these organizations on the basis that the service provided remains free.

Good idea! And hopefully the free content will drive the for-profit scamsters out of business, and make it difficult for greedy admin types to cash in.

But I think one would have to have an ironclad contract, just to make sure that what starts free, remains free.

Perhaps by charging royalties calculated as 100x the “gross sale price”. If the price is zero, no problem.